


Once again, with feeling

by Itsamess



Category: La La Land (2016)
Genre: Coincidences? The universe is rarely so lazy, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I am La la trash, La La Land, La la love, Lots of movie references, Maybe you'll notice, Missed Connections, Post-Movie(s), la la lANGST, quite sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10026371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsamess/pseuds/Itsamess
Summary: «Do you ever think about what it could have been?» she asked quickly, as if that question had been on her lips all the time and it had just finally lost its balance. «If something had gone wrong – or right – if we both had made different choices?»Sebastian chocked back a bitter laugh.If I think about it?I play it every night.I play our version of the story, I play of starlight waltzes and kitchen walls painted in yellow, I play of a blonde boy, car trips and horns broken by exasperated neighbours.





	

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, so if you spot any mistake please let me know.

  
  


Hearing Mia’s voice again after years of distance had given him the same feeling of listening on the radio to your old favorite song, whose lyrics are foggy and wrong in your mind but whose melody you can perfectly recall.  
  
«Hello?»  
  
«Mia! Hi… I’m- »  
  
«Sebastian. It’s good to hear from you»  
  
«Yeah, it’s nice to hear from you too»  
  
At the end, _he_ made that call.  
  
Not _directly calling her_ , of course, since for privacy reasons a star like her couldn’t just be on the normal California White Pages. Sebastian had spent weeks sending emails to her agent, telling her that he was neither a stalker obsessed with Hollywood celebrities, nor a tabloid journalist looking for a scoop, but only an old friend of Mia who was trying to get in touch with her. Finally, after endless negotations, they let him speak to her. He couldn’t keep her on the phone too long because Mia was waited for a photoshoot and she couldn’t be late.  
  
Sebastian would have avoided calling her while she was working, but he had already tried contacting her on her private number without success. As a matter of fact, he had found out that her old number – the one he had called many times to invite her to dinner or to remind her to buy milk or just to listen to her voice before a concert with Keith’s band – was no longer active.  
Finding it out had been somehow a relief, since it let Sebastian believe that that was the reason why Mia hadn’t been answering his calls, for the last five years. Or at least that was the lie he liked to tell himself when the longing for her was too strong.  
  
«Congratulations for you club… it’s just wonderful»  
  
«Glad you like it»  
  
«I love it.I would have told you last night, but we didn’t have the chance to speak, there were so many people…»  
  
«Actually it’s like this every night. We have some regular costumers»  
  
«I see… You must be so proud of you, Seb… you made it. You have everything you’ve ever wanted»  
  
_Almost everything_ , he though, while the vivid flash of a girl pillow fighting with him about a club name that nobody would ever liked darkened his eyes. Thinking about it, Mia had always been always in all his dreams, in all his fantasies, in all is expectation for the future – like a key signature that doesn’t need to be written in every bar because it applies to the whole music sheet.  
But fate had decided differently and their lives had parted slowly, til neither of them could do anything to fix it: Mia had left for Paris and Sebastian had found himself alone in the city of stars, that had been shining just for him but much less brightly than he remembered.  
  
«Look… I am calling you to tell you that I still have some of your stuff, at my place. I can send it to you, if you give me an address-»  
  
«No. No, I’ll pick it up»  
  
«Ok»  
  
«But I don’t wanna bother you»  
  
«Pishi kaka! You couldn’t even if you tried»  
He felt her smiling. He knew that her lips were curving even if she wasn’t there, because he knew Mia by heart, like one of that Christmas songs he remembered even though he was trying to erase them.  
«Seb’s opens at half past seven, but I have to be there earlier to meet the musicians…»  
  
«I’ll be there at six. Is six ok?»  
  
«Yeah, yeah.»  
  
«See you later»  
  
«I’ll be waiting»  
  
It seemed to him that he had spent the last five years of his life waiting for her.  
A couple of hours more couldn’t make any difference.

\---

If there was one thing that Mia had learned from flights and taxies and hotel rooms and lonely beds was that it is not safe to come back to a place after years: one could be tempted to look for the differences between his memory and reality, noticing every little change – _wasn’t that lamp taller? Weren’t the curtains green?_ – when the most of the times the greatest change is inside.  
  
And Mia knew she had changed.  
She had left Los Angeles with a suitcase full of insecurities and she had come back a few years later on a first class flight paid by her movie studio, while a crowd of journalists was screaming her name out of the airport. That sudden fame wasn’t appealing in itself – because that wasn’t the reason why she wanted to become an actress – but it boosted her self-confidence. She had spent years thinking not to be good enough, pretty enough, smart enough… and then Paris had come along.  
The chance of a lifetime, after the most heart-breaking and true audiction she had ever made – the only audition in which she had cried because of her feelings and not to please a director. The producers had been very impressed and had called her back. The role had been hers.  
_Literally_ hers, since she had contributed to writing it: in all that long months of rehersals, the movie had been tailor-made for her, like all the fancy dresses she was wearing on red carpets. Looking back, she was proud of every step of her career, but that first role held a special place in her heart, just like the man who was partially responsible for it: Sebastian had driven all night just to go tell her in person about the callback. That night, he had proved to believe in her more than she could ever believed in herself. Mia was realizing just now that,that night, Sebastian had begged her not to give up on her dream as desperately as he was holding his own.  
 

\---

  
In the meanwhile, the taxi had stopped.  
Mia could recognize the neighbourhood by the familiar line of palm at both sides of the street, that were like columns holding the violet ceiling of the LA sunset. She paid for the ride and hurriedly climbed the stairs, while the memories appeared before her eyes like camera flashes: Sebastian carrying her across the threshold and stumbling in an old stool he would have never got rid of, Sebastian asleep on the couch, bored by an old movie she had forced him to watch, Sebastian sitting at the piano, with his eyes closed and a happy smile, like right before a kiss.  
  
Mia took a deep breath.  
It all belonged to the past.   
She really had to stop thinking about it, it hurt too much.  
  
That was why, when she found herself in front of the door of a house that she had once called _home_ , Mia decided to try what Parisians called _jamas vu_ or “the surprised feeling of living something we actually have already experienced”.  
Just as she had pretended not to remember the creaking of the last step, stepping on it like it was just another step, Mia ignored the little voice inside her telling that there still were extra keys under the matt and just rang the bell.  
  
Sebastian came to the door after few moments, breathless and barefooted.  
He was probably getting dressed, because not even a guy like him could walk around with just one sock, Two-coloured, for that matter. He was wearing an pair of elegant black trousers in what seemed polyester and some vintage-like suspenders hanged over his hips. A bow tie peeked out from the immaculate white collar of the shirt. It was still untied, its extremities like black bookmarks on an empty title page.  
  
«You are early» he noticed in a terribly serious voice.  
The clock behind him proved him right. It was still half past five.  
  
«Wrong time zone» she said, blushing a little «Will you let me in anyway?»  
  
Sebastian pretended to think about it, rubbing his chin in a meditative way, then he surrendered to a smile. He cerimoniously opened the door, taking an half bow that made her smile.  
«Sorry about the mess…»  
  
_Mess_ had to be the euphemystic code word Sebastian used to define the complete chaos of the apartment, because Mia didn’t even know where to tiptoe. There was too much stuff around. Piles of empty cardboard boxes were scattered on the floor and were probably there since Seb’s had been renovated. Packaging material was all over the place. The kitchen table was barely visible from the doorway but seemed covered in vynil records, like Sebastian couldn’t make up his mind picking an album to listen to. With a rapid glance at the living room, Mia noticed there there were a lot of crumpled papers scattered on the floor around the piano.  
  
The whole house was a mess, but the homeowner didn’t seem to care. He was moving through all that stuff with the happy ease of a kid jumping on a crosswalk and trying not to touch the blacktop.  
«You can put the coat…»  
Sebastian looked around, puzzled, only in that moment fully realizing how disorganized his apartment was. He shook his head and said to Mia:«You know what? Give it to me. I’ll put it in the bedroom. Make yourself at home»  
  
Those words fell between them like rocks thrown into a pond, heavy and unexpectedly hard.  
  
They both remembered all too well that it _had actually been_ her home, just a few years before.  
  
Mia opened and closed her mouth without making any sound.  
  
Sebastian bit his lower lip and closed his eyes «I’m sorry»  
  
«Don’t be. It’s okay, I’m fine» she answered. She had become a professional actress: lying was easy as breathing. She ignored the lump in her throat and repeated:«I’m fine»  
  
«I’ll go hang your coat. I’ll be right back»  
  
Mia was grateful to watch him disappear behind a closed door, because it gave her the chance to hold back the tears stinging her eyes. She couldn’t cry. She wasn’t a girl anymore. She moved closer to the piano and caressed its surface with her fingertips, wondering if Sebastian was still writing music.  
The answer was crumpled up at her feet: dozens of wrinkled papers lied on the floor. She picked up one of them and smoothed it, feeling a strange and bittersweet regret. The score was scribbled using a pencil. The five-line staff was quite crooked and the lines were slowly merging to the others, like the ending of a comet. There was a spot where an erasure had softened the line because Sebastian had changed the melody.  
  
Mia had never learnt how to read music so she couldn’t say if it was a good song, but she knew for sure that nobody would have never listened to it.  
  
_It could have been the best song ever and nobody would have listened to it_.  
 

\---

  
When Sebastian came back he was wearing shoes and carrying a cardboard box like the ones that were scattered on the floor, but it looked way heavier. It had been strenghtened with scotch tape and seemed very old. On one side of it, in Sebastian’s bad handwriting, there was written just one word. _Mia_  
  
She was sitting on the edge of the couch, her hands on her lap. A golden thin wedding ring was shining on her ring finger.  
Sebastian looked away.  
  
He put the box on the coffee table, over a layer of old newspapers.  
«Ok, that should be all» he murmured «Nothing of value, obviously…it’s just old stuff, but I thought you might have wanted it»  
  
«I do, thank you» she answered without even knowing if it was a lie or not. She didn’t know the reasons why she had come back to him, but she doubted they could be in that box. She hadn’t been needing those things in the last five years, why on earth she could possibly need them now? If she had came picking them up it had been just to see Sebastian, but in that bunch of old stuff there wasn’t anything useful… Or so she thought.  
  
_Nothing of value_ , Sebastian had said, but Mia couldn’t have imagined anything more precious.  
The box contained – that was the only way to define them – _memories_.  
Old videocassettes – _Singing in the rain, Gone with the wind, Vertigo_ – that her aunt had given her for her tenth birthday. Some books. The script of a play never submitted. An orrible stuffed crab that Sebastian had won for her at a fair, shooting at cans (and bribing the carny, Mia suspected, since he wasn’t a great cowboy). A light blue sweater that she loved so much she bought two. The music sheet of a song Sebastian had written for her birthday – pretty much a jazz version of Happy Birthday. A silken yellow dress, the one she had worn the night of their almost-first-kiss, when a ringtone had stopped them.  
  
«You kept everything...» she whispered, more to herself than to Sebastian.  
  
He had been sitting beside her and had watched her pulling every object out of the box with the greatest care. She hadn’t moved her eyes away from the box, as if she feared it would have disappeared. Mia had seemed fascinated by the most usual things and Sebastian had remembered a movie they had watched together, the one with the mermaid collecting human cutlery.  
  
He smiled one of his crooked smiles.  
«Are you kidding? Original Mia Dolan Memorabilia? My Ebay profile keeps getting offers. Lucky me, it’s all in good conditions!»  
  
Mia would have probably laughed if she hadn’t noticed one more thing on the bottom of the box.  
It was another book, not different from the others except for the orange rectangle used as a bookmark. Mia recognized it immediately: it was the _Rialto_ ’s movie ticket for _Rebel without a cause_ – another missed kiss, even though Mia knew they had catched up fast, kissing on trams and in empty planetariums. She felt a sting of pain realizing that the ticket was the bookmark for a never finished and left halfway book, just like the romance between her and Sebastian.  
  
She pulled out this last memory too and, holding her breath, she opened the book.  
The ticket slipped away and fell on the floor.  
At first look, it had disappeared in the utter mess of the living room.  
«It must be under the couch…»  
  
«I got it» Sebastian offered, getting off the couch and starting to kneel.  
  
She stopped him taking kindly but firmly his shoulder, It was something she ha wanted to do alone.  
«You would rumple your suit. Polyester is a delicate fabric»  
  
«It’s wool» he replied in a resentful tone, before smiling.  
  
She smiled back and bent over the floor to take a look under the couch, but it was too dark and narrow to see anything. She had to go blindly… _how many movie tickets could Sebastian keep under the couch?_  
She reached out, trying to ignore the dust covering her fingertips, and moved her hand right and left til she felt something. It was too thick to be the lost ticket, but maybe it still was something important. Mia dragged it towards herself.  
  
It was a long and narrow envelope. It must have been originally white, but time and dust had changed its colour to a yellowish grey. Mia got up, keeping her eyes on the letter, curious and excited. _Who was the mysterious sender Sebastian had forgotten to answer to?_ The date on the rubber-stamp was more than five years old – an inexcusable delay if it was a Christmas greeting card.  
But it wasn’t a greeting card: on the top right, next to the stamp, there was the faded logo of the _Energy Distribution Company_.  
Mia kept staring at the envelope totally clueless and then she understood.  
An half smile curved her lips as she met Sebastian’s eyes: «Remember when the electricity company cut off our supply and we had to dine by candlelight for a whole week? …I might have just understood why!»  
She waved the letter before his eyes, disapproving and amused at the same time.  
«A forgotten bill! Such a classic…»  
  
Sebastian didn’t seem particularly sorry.  
«You must agree that with all those candles around, that was the hottest week of your life… Ops, did I just say _hottest_? I meant romantic and poetic and…»  
  
Mia burst out laughting, throwing her head back like a little girl. She was so beautiful, when she laughed. For a moment she could remove the sarcasm armour that she wore to face the world and return the girl she must have been before moving to Hollywood, before realizing how hard could be the life of dreamers.  
Sebastian watched her turning the letter in her hands, smiling. Maybe he would have cracked another joke just to see her laugh again, but Mia suddently changed expression. She had noticed something on the back of the envelope, since she was staring at it with furrowed brow.  
  
«What?» he asked her.  
She didn’t say anything. He was beginning to worry.  
«Mia, what’s the matter?»  
  
He got closer to her and took a look of the envelope she was holding. Even seeing it upside down, that was clearly the familiar handwriting of Laura. She had scribbled _Call her!_ under a telephone number.  
  
«Oh, it must be the number of that girl! My sister kept talking about her, saying that she was perfect for me. I remember asking her if that girl liked jazz and Laura had the nerve to answer “Probably not”! »  
Sebastian burst into a short and harsh laugh.  
«Seriously, what did she think we would have talked about, if that girl didn’t like jazz?»  
  
Since Sebastian had come closer and had started his usual philippic in defense of his favorite music genre, Mia had remained silent, keeping her eyes on the letter. She had checked and double-checked the list of digits, reading them to herself so quietly that he couldn’t have heard her and hoping with all her heart to be wrong.  
  
«It’s my number.» she muttered.  
  
Her words echoed in the living room silence, just rippled by the ticking of the metronome over the piano.  
  
Sebastian firmly shook his head.  
«No… it can’t be.»  
  
«Sebastian, it’s my old number! I think I can recognize my old number, can’t I?!» she argued with an high-pitched voice, her fingers holding the envelope so tight that her knuckles had become white. She couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was all that damned dust. She started panting.  
  
He hesitated a moment, not knowing if he could touch her, then gently stroke her shoulder.  
«Hey. It’s alright-»  
  
«No, it’s not! It’s not alright at all!» she answered, even though she was starting to breathe normally again «What’s… what’s your sister name?»  
  
«Laura.»  
  
«Laura, Laura, Laura... » Mia repeated, trying to remember if she knew someone named like that. «Yes! Laura Wilder, from the Press Office. She took coffee in her lunch break, just when my shift was about to start. We became friends, with time. She insisted that she knew the right guy for me, full of ideas and hopes for the future. “ _A dreamer or a fool, it depends on who you ask!_ ”. One day she told me she had given my number to this guy and ask me if she had gone too far, but I answered to her that I didn’t mind, because maybe it was worth a shot» Once again, she looked down the dusty letter, that was all wrinkled and crumpled in her tight grasp.  
«That guy never called me. Asshole.»  
  
They both remained silent, lost in the same memory of a lovely night, a tailor-made for two view and a girl saying _It's pretty strange that we keep running into each other_ and a guy saying _Maybe it means something._  
  
At the moment, Sebastian hadn’t realized it, but it was always her: queing in a highway, standing in a fancy restaurant, dancing at a private pool party, scribbled on an envelope.  
Isn’t it funny that destiny always gives us more than one chance to notice who is meant to be with us?  
  
Mia was the first to speak.  
«It doesn’t mean anything.» she decided with the most resolute voice she managed to find «It’s just a coincidence.»  
  
Sebastian raised an eyebrow. «Some years ago you would have call it a sign»  
  
«A sign you should clean house more often!» she answered, without being harsh but just a little bitter.  
He was right: some years before she was sure the universe would have always found a way to match the people that were meant to be, even after some failed attempts, like in that _Concentration_ game in which the cards had to been repeatedly turned in pairs with the wrong ones before understanding which are identical. But she had grown up and she had to stop stressing the _what if_ and start living in the present. Because she was happy, she really was. She had everything she had ever wanted… a family, a career and thousands of positive rewiews. Happiness was there, in front of her -  _you cannot miss it, lady -_  but missing him made everything more complicate.  
  
Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. «Maybe you’re right. I shoud really clean up this place»  
  
«Maybe you’ll find the number of some other perfect girl» Mia added, cracking a smile.  
  
«Maybe.»  
  
_Assuming you don’t believe in the idea of soulmate, that is the one and only destined to us._  
  
«Need help with that?» she asked, pointing to his still untied bow tie, that was the only imperfect detail rippling Sebastian’s charm.  
  
«Oh, no, no problem»  
  
«I am wasting your time. At least let me help you.»  
  
«If you say so, I am all yours!»  
Sebastian theatrically spread his arms, but in his voice there was no trace of joy.  
  
Mia took a few steps forward.  
On high heels she was as tall as him, but she tried to focus just on the bow-tie and not on the familiar lips of Sebastian or the little scar he had on his chin. Little details like those – or like the way he smiled with his eyes before smiling with his mouth or that hungarian expression he liked to randomly put in every conversation – were the proof that he hadn’t changed. Mia tied up the bow-tie as quick (and probably as bad) as she could, just to walk away from him before kissing him and ruin everything.  
  
«I really don’t wanna make you waste time, you must be already late… _Seb’s_ opens in an hour and I should come back to my- I really should come back home»  
  
«Of course. I’ll go get you coat»  
  
«Thank you»  
  
Mia called the taxi service.  
It was time to come back home, come back to reality. She moved closer to the coffee table and started to put back everything into the box, trying to fit all those memories in a drawer of her heart that would have stay tightly closed, from then on. She dismissed every objet with a silent yet heart-felt gratitude that sound more or less like _Thank you for making me feel loved_. In the last five years, Mia had been looked up to, emulated, inteviewed and adored but love… love was a near-kiss in a movie theatre, while an old film was deflagrating on the big screen.  
  
«Can I call you a cab or something?»  
In the meanwhile, Sebastian had come back with her coat. He was holding his phone.  
  
«No, thank you, I just did it myself…» she said. She hesitated a moment and then added: «But while you’re at it, please, add this phone number to you contacts: 241-»  
  
«Wait, whose number is this?» Sebastian stopped her, looking confused.  
  
«It’s the number of a girl that would really like you»  
  
«I thought you had just suggested me to look for girls’ telephone numbers under my home forniture» he replied, raising an eyebrow.  
  
«This is easier, isn’t it?» Mia finished dictating the number and warned him: «I’ll tell you right now that she is not a jazz expert, she has recently started to listening to it, so please be understanding. And try to call her, one of these days… She will be happy to hear from you»  
  
Sebastian couldn’t smile.  
«Mia...»  
  
«Thank you for keeping all my stuff, it has been very kind of you» she add, ignoring him. She put her coat on, even just to have a reason not to look him in the eyes.  
  
«Mia.. This is your number, isn’t it?»  
  
She seemed offended and shot him a scolding glance.  
«I am not so predictable!»  
  
Sebastian hit the call button.  
A ringtone started to echo in the room. It came from one pocket of the coat Mia had just put on.  
«Apparently, you are»  
  
«Ok, that’s right, that's right, this is my new number... » she admitted «But I really wanted you to have it. I- I miss you, Sebastian»  
  
Maybe she had realized it only in that moment, seeing him standing in his house entrance with a sad look in his eyes, just like we don’t know how tired we are til we go to bed.  
  
«I miss you too»  
  
«So come back in my life!» she screamed , before realizing Sebastian had never really left it – _not really, not completely_ – and correcting herself she said:«Stay, in my life. We don’t need to say goodbye. We could be friends-»  
  
«I don’t think this is a good idea, Mia.»  
  
«Oh…»  
  
She knew, from the melancholy of his voice, that he wasn’t asking, but _begging_.  
He was begging her to let him go, to let him let her go. He was begging her to let him forget, giving him five more years of head-start before getting in touch with him again. And maybe he was begging her to break up with him, since the last time she just got on a plane.  
  
She owed him a goodbye, a real one.  
  
She leaned for a kiss on his cheeck, as lonely and solemn as a promise or the last note of a music score.  
«Take care of yourself, Sebastian.»  
  
«You too»  
  
She quickly turned her back before he could read on her face the pain she was feeling. She picked up her cardboard box and headed towards the door. He gallantly opened it for her, since she was holding the box. Mia went through the door and took a few steps before looking back.  
«Sebastian…»  
  
She was so beautiful, with her dishevelled hair and her hands holding a buch of old stuff she didn’t really need. She looked like a girl just dropped off at college. Sebastian couldn't help thinking she looked younger than the woman with a severe bun and high heels that had rang his doorbell. She looked younger and _more vulnerable,_ if the glitter in her eyes was made of tears.  
«Yeah?»  
  
«Do you ever think about what it could have been?» she asked quickly, as if that question had been on her lips all the time and it had just finally lost its balance. «If something had gone wrong – or right – if we both had made different choices?»  
  
Sebastian chocked back a bitter laugh.  
  
_If I think about it?  
  
I play it every night.  
  
I play our version of the story, I play of starlight waltzes and kitchen walls painted in yellow, I play of a blonde boy, car trips and horns broken by exasperated neighbours._  
  
He could see before his eyes images of moments that he had never really lived, but only dreamt of.  
It didn’t make them less real: they had the bright colours of Van Gogh’s paintings and the unclear outlines typical of French Impressionism. They took life everytime Sebastian played a certain song, as if it was a recurring synesthesia where each note matched to a color and every chord was a brush stroke.  
  
«I think we would have been happy» he answered with disarming honesty, shrugging his shoulders.  
He wanted tell her the truth, because that was probably their last chance to speak and he would have never stained it with a lie.  
  
Mia didn’t say anything, but the tear veil in her eyes became clearer as if with that answer Sebastian had confirmed her worst fear.  
  
«But we are happy anyway, aren’t we?» he added quickly, trying to fix his mistake and see her smile again «You have your career, your family…»  
  
«And you have your club…» she said, in a voice that wanted to be convincing but sounded very unsure  
  
«Yeah, the club! That thanks to you isn’t called _Chicken on a Stick!_ »  
  
«We made it, Sebastian. We are the ones that made it. Our dreams came true before we were forced to give up to them»  
  
Mia had seen enough of showbiz to know that people call _dreamers_ the fools that succed and _fools_ the dreamers that don’t.  
Her and Sebastian had been lucky enough to be the formers, but they both knew all to well the sound of slammed doors. They had been rejected so many times they had lost count and had been tempted to give up and leave the city of stars to someone better – _or even just stronger_ – than them. But they hadn’t. They had stayed strong and time had repayed them making their dreams reality, even though the price to pay had been higher than they expected.  
  
Mia put the memories box on the floor between them, bridge and wall at the same time.  
  
Before she could speak, Sebastian said: «So, if you want me to be honest: Yeah, I think about it… but I know that I shouldn’t. It’s the first rule that a jazz pianist has to learn»  
  
«What do you mean?» she asked, leaning to the door frame.  
  
«Every note becomes the right one the moment you play it. You know, people think that in jazz jam-session everything is random, everything is pure ispiration. No rules, no outline… and that’s partly true. You don’t have a music sheet, you’re free to play every note you freaking want to. But when you’ve played it, well, you can’t go back. It’s like there is not a right answer, but each answer is the final one. That’s what I love about jazz jam sessions… they are totally impromptu, but the result is far from random. Every note was perfect in the moment you played it, the way you played it, and it couldn’t be any other way… and that’s rule number one, for me: the choices we make become right the moment we make them. It’s true in music and it’s true in life.»  
  
While he was speaking, his eyes were glimmering and his voice had acquired the casual agility that Sebastian’s hands had when he was playing a musical scale. Mia could have been staring at him for hours, because Sebastian seemed perfectly happy and happines was the suit he wore better. His smile got wider, his gaze got brighter. Here and there he gesticulated animatedly, more to channel his energy into a phisical movement that to really mimic something.  
  
Mia let go all the _jamais vu_ idea and remembered that she had fallen in love with him for the passionate way he talked about the things he loved. Oh, his love for jazz…  
When she had first met him, Mia had thought that in the world there wasn’t anything Sebastian could love more than jazz, but maybe she had been the living proof of the contrary.

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to thank you anyone who read this far.  
> Love you, la la landers


End file.
